The Tree of Woe
by Sat-Isis
Summary: James Norrington chooses not to die and the universe decides to give him hell. Extremely nasty fic - although it does have a happy ending if you can stomach the beginning.
1. Chapter 1

Norrington parried the thrust that would have skewered him at the last possible second. He looked more surprised than the man-fish that went by the name "Bootstrap."

James had fully expected to die, and he had accepted it without qualm, when he had freed Elizabeth and her crew. Naturally, there was a great deal of regret on his part; he regretted letting Sparrow gain a day's head start, he regretted the loss of the _Dauntless_ and her crew, he regretted his deal with Cutler Beckett, but most of all he regretted not being able to bring himself to go with Elizabeth.

He knew that as soon as he let her go that his death would not be far behind and James was certain he had been prepared for it. And then he was reacting without thought, something ancient and animal within him cried out for life and James obeyed it.

"ALL HANDS! PRISONER ESCAPE!"

The old fish-man's voice rang out declaring Norrington a traitor and the whole crew was roused and gathered aft by the dueling men. Davy Jones materialized between the two men. Bootstrap lurched back, obsequiously awaiting orders. The _Dutchman's_ captain clasped Norrington's sword in his claw.

"You steal my heart, you come onto my ship, murder my servants and my pet - and THAT is what grieves me the most! You killed my Kraken."

"It was Lord Beckett who ordered the death of your monster, not I. Furthermore, this man attacked me."

"Aye, and with good reason - you've let the captives away on the prize!"

James Norrington stood his ground, his eyes blazing into Jones', a silent battle raging in the space between them. The Admiral was the first to break the silence.

"You murdered my crew and sunk my ship!"

"James Norrington, do you fear death?" Davy Jones attempted to bend James' sword and render the blade impotent, but only succeeded in wrenching it from his grip when he twisted his claw. Had Norrington less class he would have spit in Jones' face.

"Contemplate this on the tree of woe, Admiral. TIE HIM TO THE MAST!" The _Dutchman_'s crew roared with monstrous approval. James' arms were wrenched behind him and a path cleared to the mast; a gauntlet to guide his way.

Jones transferred Norrington's sword to his tentacled hand and snipped the scabbard of the Admiral's hip before he was presented to crew. _Such a waste_, Jones thoughts to himself as Norrington was lead to his slow and agonizing death, _nice sword though. _The captain then retreated to his cabin; his presence was no longer needed.

When James reach the mast he was cut and bloodied as the appendages of jeering faces lashed out at him with tooth, nail, and barnacle. Norrington's hat and wig lay in ruins on the deck, trampled by the encroaching crew in his wake. The boson slammed James face-first into the mast; he knew his nose was broken from the pain and the warm blood leaking down his face.

"What's first, lads?"

The bosom asked magnanimously.

"FLOG HIM!"

The frenzied cry came, echoing disjointedly along the deck as other voices proclaimed their agreement.

A hand pressed Norrington's head into the wood as others pulled off his clothes. His greatcoat yielded with the least resistance and was flung out to the horde to be ripped to shreds. James resisted the hands and claws ripping at his waistcoat and shirt, but his own cravat was used to choke him into unconscious submission.

Those cruel hands bared the Admiral's naked back to the crew and used the length of his cravat to lash his hands together so that he was forced to embrace the mast. A bucket was lowered over the larboard side and filled to the brim; they dumped it over Norrington and forced his consciousness.

The cat was brought forth from a rust-brown bag and snapped into action – the knots dancing about the strips of leather. James screamed himself hoarse when it flayed his back and ripped apart his skin until the blood pooled in his boots.

When the lashings no longer provoked a reaction as Norrington no longer had the strength to react to the pain, the crew demanded their own blood-sport with the Admiral.

Another bucket of sea water was flung onto James' raw back and he forced out a high and breathless sound like an animal. Norrington was limp as a rag doll when his hands were unbound and he was turned about. His back was slammed against the mast and his hands tied once again behind the mast.

Each creature was allowed his pleasure with James so long as a fatal blow was not delivered. One crewman flung an empty rum bottle at the wood above Norrington's head and the broken glass rained down on him – superficial little cuts that bleed in trickles. Another carved his name into the Admiral's chest with the sharp shells on his hands. As each tried to out-do the one before him Norrington was left with a knife in his side that pierced his muscle and pinned him to the mast. James' left eye was torn out and eaten by an eel living inside one creature's body. Norrington was urinated and defecated on. His arms were broken from wrist to shoulder and the next crewman yanked out a jagged piece of coral growing on him and embedded it into Norrington's thigh.

The Admiral sobbed quietly – retreating into his own pain – as his breaches were ripped open and he was slowly and fully castrated to the delight of all. The last creature, not willing to be outdone and possessing a wicked cleverness, broke James' jaw. A ripple of anticipation wriggled over the crew as the creature picked up Norrington's prick and bollocks. He held them high above his head with a grin on his face. The horde responded with equally feral bared teeth as they understood what would happen next. Gripping James' hair the creature held the man's head up, mouth gapping, and shoved the severed pieces of James Norrington back into him.

The crew cheered, immensely satisfied with their work, and the Admiral was left to bleed to death or to be picked apart by the gulls that morning – whichever came first. Thank God James was a million miles away; locked safely within the heaven of his own mind and wallowing in memories of days long past.


	2. Chapter 2

All through the night Norrington was ignored by the crew. His loyal marines, thinking him already dead, kept watch over the still-beating heart of Davy Jones; resolute in the face of their Admiral's final orders.

James still tied to the mast and his wounds coagulated and crusted over, drifted in an elastic dreamtime. An odd clicking sound, like a clock, kept the circadian rhythm. Still a leftenant, his own commission recently granted, he took tea with Jamaica's new viceroyalty. Time and place stretched again, like a rubber band, only to snap back into place completely disoriented. Andrew, Theo and he were getting drunk on pilfered wine. It was not a real memory, the three had never been midshipmen together…but the pilfered wine…that was somehow true. And so was puking their guts up on the deck – earning them all a stern caning.

Only Norrington really was vomiting on the deck and the pain dancing at the edges of his non-functioning vision was real as well, but not the result of a caning. After the dry heaves had settled into something like sobs, James found it easier to breathe and drifted back into something akin to sleep.

That morning the gulls found him. The clicking blended with the flicker of wings, indistinguishable. At first they flew in to snatch pieces of dried vomit and genital off the deck. Some even pecked at the shellfish growing on the Dutchman; but turned their attention to the Admiral once their curiosity had been satisfied. Embolden by the lack of movement by the man against the mast, they perched tentatively on his head and shoulders. Wings splayed for a quick take-off at the slightest hit of retaliation, the gulls stretched out their necks and worried at the crusted wounds with their beaks.

With the crowding about his torso and feet, one gull flew up and landed awkwardly on his thigh, webbed feet clutching precariously to woolen breeches. Wings fluttering for balance, the gull leaned in to peck at the scabbed stump at the crux of Norrington's thighs.

James awoke from a dream of courting young Miss Swann with a hoarse scream. The gull flew off him, startled cries echoing. Panting and trembling, fresh blood oozing from his picked scabs, he looked about the deck with his one good eye. Norrington kept seeing something out of the corner of his vision, a speck of white in a deep, dark void. Overhead the gulls circled and called to one another, studying their food.

After a few moments of fruitlessly scanning the deck, the Admiral realized he was going mad. The speck of white was a tiny crab clicking its pincers and James could only see it from the socket that was empty.

He laughed long and hard. The gulls perched in the rigging, waiting for their prey to settle.

The wind had picked up, hurrying the _Dutchman_ along towards her fate and the salty spray stung Norrington's wounds. The sneering face of Mr. Mercer passed before him and the clicking of the little crab droned like a methadone. Young Elizabeth was learning how to plink on the pianoforte and little James was learning to dance from his Welsh instructor.

The Admiral was slumped against the mast and the fight seemed to leak out of him. The knife in his side was slowly tearing apart his muscle and flesh and soon James would be unpinned from the mast. He imagined sliding down the mast to sit on the deck and to rest until death took him. The birds read his mind.

A gull landed on his shoulder and pecked at Norrington's empty socket. Through the haze of pain from the previous night, James had thought his jaw had been broken, but it had only been dislocated. Quick as a snake and before he could realize what he was about, the Admiral had sunk his teeth into the warm, feathered flesh.

The bird flailed, calling boisterously, and James shook his head like a dog. He broke the gull's wing and it flopped out of his lock-jawed mouth and onto the deck. In pain, the pitiful creature flapped and hobbled feebly at Norrington's feet.

Spitting downy feathers off his lips, James felt an incredible sorrow. If he had tears left he would have shed them. What a monstrous thing he had done. Norrington was as incapable of speech as the bird was flight. Very gently, James moved his leg impaled with coral and nudged the gull towards him.

The Admiral's leg would not support him. He slid down the mast; free of the knife in his side. Light headed, James leaned back against the mast and closed his eye. Trying to breathe deeply proved useless.

Cocking his head at the bird and squinting with his good eye, Norrington slowly used his good leg to coax the gull towards him. It perched on his shin and James felt better. He hoped the damn thing would not wander about the deck and get stepped on. The bird eyed him warily, still hungry, but afraid of the teeth this morsel possessed.

There was a bustling about the _Dutchman_ that James could not quite put his finger on. Restlessness among the crew, but no call to quarters ensued. Not the air before battle, but something else. Perhaps a docking..?

_Thunk, thunk, thunk_ heralded the approach of _The Flying Dutchman_'s captain. Norrington glanced up blearily from the preening gull, its beak reminding him of a crab's pincer. Jones was chuckling at him, though not unkindly.

"Dinna think I do not admire ye, Admiral, I do. A great deal, in fact. Has not this charade carried on long enough? Do ye not long for death? Are ye…afraid of death?"

James pulled his blistering lips over his teeth and made an inarticulate sound in his throat. The gull followed suit and hissed at Davy Jones, waddling up Norrington's leg.

"It may interest ye to know Admiral that I go now to parlay at Beckett's side with the Pirate King. Beckett has quite the fleet gathered about him and with meself at his disposal he shall be nigh unstoppable. I wonder if I should mention to him yer little intrigues about my ship."

_As if he would care that I still lived_, James thought. Norrington could not voice his thoughts. He had no spit to lubricate his words, his tongue hot and heavy in his mouth and dry as a stone.

"Did ye know that I was ordered to bring the bonny Mistress Swann to Beckett should I come across her? He seemed verra insistent on having her alive and unharmed."

Norrington narrowed his eye at Davy Jones and gave him a glare that would have made a midshipman shit himself. Jones was only amused.

"Ye must be burning up terribly in this sun, Admiral. Too bad we of the _Dutchman_ not being mortal men carry no fresh water aboard. I could offer ye a tin of sea water. Yer death would be slow and painful and ye would lose yer mind long before the end. Would ye like that, Admiral?"

James flared his nostrils and if he lacked the class and had the saliva left he would have spit at Jones.

"I have heard a rumor that the bonny Miss Elizabeth travels with the Pirate King. I have no doubt that Beckett will ask for her as a condition of the parlay and I have no doubt that the Pirate King, not being a stupid man, will gladly part with her. I dinna doubt that one day she may even begin to enjoy the attentions of Lord Beckett and I dinna doubt that one day he may actually make her Lady Beckett. Why, she may even come to _love_ him! What do ye think of that, Admiral?"

Davy Jones missed James Norrington's look of inarticulate rage as he thunked away laughing. The gull cried and shifted uneasily on his thigh as it felt the impotent rage vibrate in his veins. The little white crab darted in and out of James' sightless eye, clicking its pincers in a quicker tempo; a drumbeat that rallied the Admiral's failing body.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: The Tree of Woe

The world was rendered in a blue-grey haze of sound and fury and though James Norrington still lived, bound to the mast at the very citadel of violence, the only thought that came to mind was that if this was indeed Hell, it was quite impressive though Dante had rendered it incorrectly. _Fucking Italian._

The Admiral smiled, it was quite a blessing to be tied to the mast, else he would have been washed off the deck and swept into the gurgling, gaping maw of Hell. The gull seemed to be taking things rather calmly as it nestled into the crook of Norrington's calf and thigh. James wondered if it would have flown away with the flock if he had not broken its wing…instead the bird serenely preened.

He found himself thoroughly amused by the antics of the crab; scuttling about the deck, snipping at the corpse of Mr. Mercer, annoying the gull from time to time. The little white crab now seemed to be dancing for him, its pinchers snipping wildly and its legs tapping against the deck. James found he was amused by everything, especially Jones' earlier equivocations. That conversation might not have even been real, for Norrington knew there was fresh water and other victuals on the _Dutchman_.

Oh yes, James Norrington knew he was dying and he had never thought it would be such a pleasant and light-headed sensation. Naturally his increasing good humors had to be interrupted by two faces he had never thought to see again. The marines, Murtogg and Mullroy, in their ridiculous EITC uniforms were trying to loose him from the mast.

_Mind the crab, if you please, Mr. Murtogg. It amuses me._

The marine could not hear him and because he could not see the crab Murtogg did not know that he had come within an inch of squishing it. Nor could Murtogg hear what his superior was saving, but he saw the swollen, chapped lips move. It was a shame, truly a shame, that Mullroy could not untie the ropes that kept Norrington tied to the mast. It was for the best; what would have been the point of carrying about James' corpse?

The Admiral looked up at his faithful marines. There were tears streaming down Murtogg's distorted face and behind him Mullroy was wearing a numb mask with wide, dry eyes. There were so many things he wanted to say to them and he could only hope that his dulling green eye conveyed his message:

_You are good men and you have served me faithfully. I could not have received better men and there is naught else you can do to serve me. I am a dead man. You both still have a chance. Carpe diem, men. Now go. Go._

And James Norrington did mouth the word "go" to his marines and they understood. Mullroy helped his mate up and with a final salute Murtogg followed his fellow to safety. In any other situation, James would have felt such heartbreak at this moment, but now he felt only a deep sense of peace spread throughout him.

The white crab crawled up Norrington's hands and began to work the loosened cords with its pincers. The gull, not wanting to be outdone, waddled behind James and pecked at the threading rope and intermittently hissed at the little crab. As the binds broke the gull buried its beak into remaining ties on the Admiral's left hand while the crab clutched the cord coiled about his right hand. When James Norrington hit the water he was already dead.


	4. Chapter 4

Lurking beyond Norrington's eyelids was the sea and when he listened he could feel the surf pounding against his battered corpse. He had never thought that burial at sea would be anything like this; a semblance of nothingness interspersed with dreams of healing wounds and nightmares where they were hacked open again and always, always the unease of the sea suffocating him.

Something was different this time; James was awake and could hear the echo of the ocean without pain. Moving his fingers, Norrington felt a blanket of some sort. He sighed and opened his eyes and beheld a ceiling of rock. A frown wrinkled his features as he brought his hands up to rub his sleepy eyes into focus and make sense of things. James shuddered as his knuckles grazed over the empty socket.

A little cry of shock and Norrington sat up and threw the covers aside. He was naked and saw that his legs were whole and there was the authority of his sex at the crux of his thighs. Transfixed, he was afraid to move least he dislodge his parts. James took a breath, reached down and cupped himself. Prick and bullocks intact and attached – he gave a slight tug on each to assure himself – and he let out the breath he had been holding.

James ran a hand down his leg with wonderment; there was no scar from the coral pike. Reexamining his masculine accoutrements, Norrington discovered the absence of scars and when he ran his hand along his side and chest he felt no scars. He was utterly puzzled – had it all been a dream? His hand came up to his eye again and felt its absence. Norrington wondered if the torture had fractured his mind and he would come to his senses covered in scars and missing his manhood.

Reaching down again he pinched his foreskin and accepted the pain with a breath that hissed out between his teeth. Still unsatisfied, Norrington plucked a hair from his scrotum with a yelp. Mollified to a point that this was no delusion, James looked about the cavernous chamber and placed his hands over his cock and bollocks protectively.

One eye flitted hither and thither; he deduced that he was in some sort of cave close to the sea. The air, though dank, was full of brine and the way the light moved across the ceiling from the distant mouth of the cave suggested sunshine reflecting on waves. His bed was a pile of blankets on the soft sandy floor and the walls of the cave were decorated with curtains and lanterns and dried flowers among other…once living…things.

"For an Englishmon ye sure do touch yerself a lot."

James snapped his head towards the voice and spied a dark woman dressed in rags parting the equally ragged curtains. With a low whine in the back of his throat, Norrington grasped at the discarded blankets in an attempt to cover himself. But the dark woman was upon him and flung aside his cover. She smelled of the sea and of death and decay and James Norrington had never been so terrified of a woman in his entire life. He trembled with the urge to get up and away from the creature with jaundiced eyes and blackened teeth, but he found himself weak as a kitten.

"Yer fear o' me marks ye as a wise mon, Jaymes Norrington," the dark woman chuckled as she laid her hands on him and seemed to repeat the earlier inspection he had given himself.

"Madam! I insist you desist!" James squeaked out as he tried to protect his manhood from her manhandling. Dear God, what had he gotten himself into?

"It has taken me three days to undo what Davy Jones had done to ye in one, but such things cannot be hurried and especially not if they are to be done right," the dark woman said and James was blushing furiously as her hands stroked his prick and the damn thing jumped up like an excited puppy. She chuckled throatily as she moved her hands down his legs and Norrington looked everywhere but at her.

"Do ye hunger?" she asked him and he nodded, still looking away from her – an easy task as the dark woman was on James' blind side.

When the curtains rustled closed, Norrington found he could move on his own accord and wrapped the blankets primly around him. Taking the opportunity to look around the decorated cavern again James rested his eye on a collection of eyes…in a very large jar. Oh dear.

James Norrington resolved then and there that when the dark woman came back there would be answers, even if he could only manage to demand them in whispers.


	5. Chapter 5

The woman returned with a round trencher and James' stomach was growling and dancing with anticipation before she even knelt down next to him. Norrington was slightly embarrassed by his physical reaction to the delicious smelling food and the dark woman grinned at him, barring her blackened teeth. Under different circumstances he would have been put off by the dark woman's teeth enough so as not to eat, but his body demanded food.

In a bowl made of coconut husk was banana porridge and the sweet, warm smell was making James salivate, though he was slightly put off by the woman's intent to feed it to him with a crude, but smooth, wooden spoon. The darkness of her skin and her dialect naturally would usually indicate a slave woman, but James was keen to think her some maroon priestess.

"Madam, really I must protest-"

"Do ye not know dat 'tis a great pleasure of da wymonfolk te tend to a mon when bedridden-"

"I am hardly bedridden!"

"-And dat a gentlemon is always willin' to submit ta a wymon's gentle care?" The dark lady was entirely rhetorical and it was apparent to Norrington that she was going to feed him and as a gentleman he must acquiesce to her.

With an obvious pout on his face and arms crossed over his chest, James Norrington opened his mouth to be spoon-fed and hoped to God there were no eyeballs in his porridge.

The dark woman continued to grin ferally at him as he closed his mouth over the spoon to taste banana, coconut, and traces of nutmeg and cinnamon. James could have melted into the bed right then, but with the next spoonful that had grazed the side of the bowl and he felt the grit of cane sugar in his mouth he felt as though he were in heaven. Arms unraveling and face smoothing, Norrington crunched the sugar between his teeth and let the warm porridge slide down his throat.

James finished the banana porridge in this manner and eagerly awaited consuming the loaf on the trenched next to him; it appeared to be coconut bake with pick-up saltfish. In the tankard was some pale liquid which could have been goat's milk or coconut milk and Norrington was suddenly reminded of his thirst. As if she were reading his mind, and for all James knew she was, the woman held up the tankard and tilted it towards his lips.

Hunger slaked and thirst quenched, James settled supine on his bedding. Body relaxed, his mind was free to race as the dark woman removed the empty serving ware and drifted back behind the curtains. His eye darted about the cave without lingering on the unsettling parts of the décor. Why was he still alive? How did he get here? Who was this dark woman? Why did she heal him? Where was his other eye…in the…jar?

A sound of a gull drew his attention and James found himself looking at the dark woman framed by parted curtains, a glowering gull perched on her arm. Without knowing why, James was suddenly struck by the proud stature of the woman and bird, like Athena and Glaucus. Then he saw the gull's bandaged wing, "Is that the bloody bird that stuck its beak in my eye socket?" It was not the first question he wanted to ask.

"Ye bound dis creature to ye when ye clipt 'is wing," she chuckled darkly and the gull glared fiercely at him, ruffling his feathers at Norrington's indignation and confusion. "What do you intend me to do with him?" James asked as the bird begrudgingly hopped down from the woman's arm and onto his blankets. "'E will be yer eyes on da sea," the dark woman said as she knelt down beside James. The gull had settled into the blankets and tucked its head behind its shoulder.

"Madam, what do you intend to do with me?" Norrington was dumbfounded. "Ye do not mince yer words, do ye, Jaymes Norrington?" her words shocked him like falling into cold water. "How do you know me, Madam?" Norrington was frightened of the answer, but he asked anyway. The dark woman held up her hand and he saw she held a perfectly smooth, ovular rock the color of granulated salt. "I've been watchin' ye."

Unable to laugh at the absurdity of her words, Norrington grew more terrified as rationality failed to impose itself. "I ken ye: ye wish ta know why 'tis ye live, where ye are, and who I be," she said, her black eyes bring into his green ones. James latched onto those words and nodded furiously, trying to grasp onto some semblance of order that seemed to dance just out of his reach like the reflections of the sunlight sliding off the waves and rippling along the interior of the cave.

"Long ago," the dark woman began, "a mon made a pact wit' a goddess ta ferry da dead at sea ta da oth'r side. 'E was giv'n power no mon shoud have at da price o' 'is freedom. Ten years and den he woud be free ta choose a mon ta take 'is place. Da goddess fergot to free da mon and 'e were lockt in da curse. Da mon cut out 'im heart and lock it 'way. 'E call da pirate lords and used 'him power ta lock da goddess in a mortal body and take way 'er power. Da mon be punisht, but da pirates be not. Ye be in da presence o' dat goddess. I ken ye, Jaymes Norrington: 'Scourge o' Pirates' and I want ye ta be my scourge 'pon da pirate lords. Dat be why ye live, ta do mai bidden."

James blinked; her story was as hypnotic as it was incomprehensible. He did not know where to begin to understand the tangle of events. "Do you mean to say, Madam, that your goddess wishes to use me as a tool of retribution against the pirates that imprisoned her in exchange for my life?" The woman gave a throaty laugh, tossing her head back. It seemed for a moment as though she had turned to molasses and the cave shimmered about her.

When she stopped laughing and looked him dead in the eye, James beheld a beautiful woman with fair, braided hair, olive skin, and honey eyes. She was smiling at him most charmingly and disarmingly and her laughter had woven itself into a sweet sound like the giggle of a dolphin. Even the cave was no longer ramshackle; it held the air of splendid enchantment. The salty air smelled of flowers and fruit, of fabric and incense. The sound of the waves was interspersed with bird calls.

"I am Calypso," said the new woman and James recalled his reading of Homer's _Odyssey_ as a boy, tripping over the Greek and reading passages again and again until he thought he understood. He flopped down onto the bedding, suddenly faint, and pulled the blanket over his head. The gull cried out in protest to be disturbed from its roost and Norrington closed his eye and hoped this was all just a dream while the goddess continued to laugh at him.


End file.
